Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home for Monday, October 21st, 2024, I'm Brian McCulloch today. Google's strategy of keeping it in the courts is already going to plan. New AI agents from Microsoft, new open source models from IBM, perplexity is looking to raise again how far behind Apple thinks it is in AI, and what it's like to use your AirPods as hearing aids. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. And something, something this will be in the court for years.
A judge has granted Google a temporary stay on the epic ruling while Google appeals, which means Google might not have to change play store practices for a long, long time. Quoting the Verge. Technically, today's temporary administrative stay only pushes back the clock a bit long enough for the appeals court to weigh in on a longer stay, but Judge Denato reportedly told the courtroom he suspects the ninth circuit will grant that longer stay to, which could genuinely let
Google off the hook till it gets through appeal. The judge declined to give Google a longer stay himself. However, Judge Denato did not press pause on one specific part of his ruling, one that could open a crack for rival app stores according to court documents. Starting November 1st, 2024 and continuing until November 1st, 2027, Google has ordered not to make deals with carriers or device makers that block pre-installation of rival app stores
and exchange for money, revenue share, or perks. Had Judge Denato left the original deadline in place, his order would also have let developers stop using Google plays, billing as soon as November 1st. Google also would have been barred from using certain financial incentives to keep developers loyal to the store, plus it would have kicked off an eight month countdown to Google carrying
third party app marketplaces inside its own play store. Originally, Judge Denato gave Google less than a month to begin cracking open its app store and Google argued it should get the same 90 days that Apple got to make app store changes. Google also argued that Epic which filed both
the Apple and Google lawsuits didn't object to a 90 day timeline. With Judge Denato's original deadline lifted, Google is at least briefly off the hook and has potentially started down the same path Apple took that led it delay removing its anti-steering app store rules for over two years. Microsoft has unveiled 10 new AI agents for its enterprise focused Dynamics 365 apps, covering sales, finance, and more ahead of sales forces agent force availability.
Quoting Geekwire. Think of agents as the new apps for an AI powered world wrote Jared Spattaro, chief marketing officer for Microsoft's AI at work initiatives in a post about the news. Every organization will have a constellation of agents ranging from simple prompt and response to fully autonomous. They will work on behalf of an individual team or function to execute and
orchestrate business processes. The news announced Monday at Microsoft's AI tour stop in London comes a few days in advance of the planned October 25th general availability of sales forces competing agent force autonomous AI technology for sales and service sales force CEO Mark Benioff has been pointed in his criticism of Microsoft's co-pilot AI technology in recent weeks saying Microsoft is
disappointing its business customers and exposing their data to security risks. As part of the announcement this morning Microsoft said 60% of Fortune 500 companies are using its co-pilot technology. It cited examples including Lumen technologies saving a projected 50 million dollars annually due to AI helping its sales associates and Honeywell seeing productivity gains
equivalent to adding 187 full-time employees. These AI agents come in a few categories, sales including a sales qualification agent and sales order agent designed to help prioritize leads and automate order intake operations including a supplier communications agent and financial reconciliation agent which optimizes supply chain and financial processes service including a customer intent agent and customer knowledge management agent designed to improve customer service by
automating case management and updating knowledge bases. Others include a financial reconciliation agent that prepares and cleanses data sets for financial reporting and account reconciliation agent that automates the matching and clearing of transactions and a time and expense agent for time
entry expense tracking and approval workflows. Sources say perplexity is looking to raise around $500 million to double its valuation to $8 billion or more perplexity's annualized revenue is around $50 million up from around $10 million back in March of 2024 quoting the journal. Perplexity has raised three rounds of funding in the past year and unusually fast pace even by
the standards of Silicon Valley. In January it was valued at $520 million by this summer its valuation had grown to $3 billion perplexity has told investors it is looking to raise around $500 million in the new funding round according to people familiar with the matter the terms could change and the funding might not come together. The startups annualized revenue and extrapolation of the next 12 months revenue based on recent sales is currently about $50 million the knowledgeable
people said. In March its annualized revenue was a little over $10 million founded two years ago and backed by Jeff Bezos perplexity is a combination search engine and AI chatbot. It scours the web for current information like Google and provides answers to questions like chat GPT. The consumer search engine is getting about 15 million queries a day according to one of the knowledgeable people
end quote. Don't count them out of the AI race IBM has launched its open source granite 3.0 models including 2 billion and 8 billion general purpose versions and mixture of experts models aimed at enterprise customers quoting venture beat. IBM already has a $2 billion book of business related to generative AI and it's now looking to accelerate that growth. IBM is expanding its enterprise AI business today with the launch of the third generation of granite large language models.
A core element of the new generation is the continued focus on real open source enterprise AI. Going a step forward IBM is ensuring that models can be fine tuned for enterprise AI with its instruct lab capabilities. The new models announced today include general purpose options with a 2 billion and 8 billion granite 3.0. There are also mixture of experts models rounding out the update IBM also has a new group with optimized guardrail and safety options that include
granite guardian 3.0 8B and granite guardian 3.0 2B models. The new models will be available on IBM's Watson X service as well as on Amazon bedrock, Amazon Sage maker and hugging face. As we mentioned on our last earnings call the book of business that we've built on generative AI is now 2 billion plus across technology and consulting. Rob Thomas, senior vice president and chief
commercial officer at IBM said during a briefing with the press and analysts. As I think about my 25 years in IBM I'm not sure we've ever had a business that has scaled at this pace and quote. Granite 3.0 introduces a range of sophisticated AI models tailored for enterprise applications. IBM expects that the new models will help to support a range of enterprise use cases including customer service, IT automation, business process outsourcing, application development and
cyber security. The new granite 3.0 models were trained by IBM centralized data model factory team that is responsible for sourcing and curating the data used for training. A key differentiator for granite 3.0 is IBM's decision to release the models under the open source initiative approved Apache 2.0 open source license. There are many other open models such as Metas Lama in the market that are not in fact available under an OSI approved license. That's a distinction
that matters to some enterprises. The permissive Apache 2.0 license allows IBM's partners to build their own brands and intellectual property on top of the granite models. This helps foster a robust ecosystem of solutions and applications powered by the granite technology. Looking forward to IBM is thinking about the next major paradigm shift, something that the company referred to as generative computing. In essence, generative computing refers to the ability to program computers by providing
examples or prompts rather than explicitly writing out step-by-step instructions. This aligns with the capabilities of LLMs like granite which can generate text code and other outputs based on the input they receive. Feel like your finance software isn't cutting it, want the latest and greatest financial software to simplify spending, help you save time and keep you from getting trapped and busy work. Well, check out RAMP. RAMP is the corporate card and spend management software
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some in Apple think it is over two years behind the leaders in generative AI. Also, when we get Apple Intelligence, be prepared to be underwhelmed, which I think we kind of were getting that sense, right? Quote. The first Apple Intelligence features are underwhelming with the more impressive capabilities coming later. In the iPad mini marketing on Apple's website, the company spotlights for features. Three of them aren't launching until between December and March. At the start,
the signature feature will be notification summaries. These can be quite helpful if they're accurate, but they lack the well factor of competitors offerings compared with the latest fair from Google, OpenAI and Meta. Apple's AI is still far behind. Even some internal studies at Apple reflect this, I'm told. The research found that OpenAI's chat GPT was 25% more accurate than
Apple's Siri and able to answer 30% more questions. In fact, some at Apple believe that its generative AI technology at least so far is more than two years behind the industry leaders. Apple hasn't yet shown it can achieve real competence in AI. Today, there's a little reason to buy products just to get Apple Intelligence. If consumers are sold on that idea by Apple's marketing, they may be surprised to find few meaningful AI tools when they start using their
new devices. But that raises a broader question. How much do customers actually care about AI? For now, the camera advancements on a new iPhone are a bigger draw. Apple is well aware of this, which is why recent upgrades have centered on photo and video capabilities, including the terrific camera control button this year. Apple has done a good job at convincing one group that it's winning at artificial intelligence investors. The stock is trading at a record high, giving
Apple a market valuation of $3.6 trillion due in large part to AI excitement. Some analysts have even made dubious claims that Apple Intelligence is already creating an AI consumer revolution that will, quote, spark a massive holiday season. But Apple's AI glory is still years away. If the new iPhone is a hit this year, it will probably be because of everything but AI. Speaking of Apple, here's a hands-on with Apple's new hearing health features
for AirPods Pro 2, which is set to debut in iOS 18.1. Apparently, the hearing aids work well, hearing protection in all modes works well, and the hearing tests that you have to take is interesting, quoting the verge. Did you know there are people who've already been replacing ear plugs with the AirPods Pro at concerts? Until this fall, Apple had never endorsed such a use case or advertised its earbuds as hearing protection devices. The company knew people were doing it,
but kept quiet on the subject. That's now changed with iOS 18.1 and the soon-to-be-released AirPods firmware update. The AirPods Pro 2 will offer hearing protection at all times across noise cancellation, transparency, and adaptive audio modes. There's no concert mode or a specific setting to toggle. You can think of this as an expansion of the loud sound reduction option that
was already in place. Hearing protection is on by default, and Apple says, an all-new multi-band, high-dynamic range algorithm helps to preserve the natural sound of concerts and other live events. Which listening mode you'll use for concerts comes down to personal preference. I found adaptive audio works well since it lets you customize whether you prefer more noise cancellation or more pass-through. But even in full transparency mode,
some level of hearing protection is active. The more noise cancellation that's applied, the longer you can remain in relatively loud environments. You'll need a quiet space when taking Apple's hearing test. Before getting started, your iPhone will do a quick analysis of ear tip fit and environmental noise to ensure you're good to go. All of these hearing health features are calibrated for Apple's stock silicone tips. So if you're using aftermarket third-party tips,
including foam, there's no guarantee you'll get the optimal experience. Once the test begins, you just tap the screen whenever you hear any of the three beep tone sequences. There are a few key things to know about the test, though. For one, it's designed so that you can't predict or game it. The tests can play any frequency at any time, so no two are the same. Apple tests your left ear first, and here's something I wish I'd known going in. It's completely
normal to hear nothing at all for several seconds at a time. It was in those moments when 5, 6, or even 10 seconds would pass by without an obvious tone sequence where I'd start feeling pretty anxious. My best advice is to avoid wondering if you should be hearing something at a given moment, and instead just focus on the tones as they come. Some can be incredibly faint. There are visual cues that let you know the test is still moving along, even during silence. The most
obvious one being a large circle that animates on screen throughout the process. You'll also notice a progress dial for each ear that fills as you take it. Apple's hearing test only takes around 5 minutes, but it felt like a long 5 minutes for me and everyone else I've let try it. Again, that's probably because it's been too long since many of us have done this. The second time wasn't nearly as stressful. I can definitely see the hearing test having a viral moment on TikTok
and other social media, which seems like a great thing for awareness all around. Hearing loss is incredibly common. One and a half billion people around the world are living with some extent of it, according to the World Health Organization. For those 18 years and older with mild to moderate hearing loss, the AirPods Pro 2 can now serve as a clinical grade hearing aid. Once enabled, you can also toggle on a media assist setting that uses your hearing test results to optimize the sound
of music, phone calls, and video content. Within the settings menu, you can use sliders to fine-tune the hearing aids features like amplification, tone, and balance. Those options are also accessible via control center on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Much like you can slide a finger on the AirPods Pro stem to adjust volume, you can use that same gesture to control amplification when the hearing aid mode is active. You can only use the hearing aid feature when in transparency mode, though.
Apple's instructions for the hearing aid feature advise that it takes time, in some cases weeks, for customers to get fully accustomed to the sound. Being able to use Apple's $250 earbuds as a hearing aid is a huge deal for those who can benefit from this capability, but they won't be
right for everyone. People with more severe hearing loss will still need to seek other solutions, and the main trade-off with the AirPods Pro 2 is battery life, they can last for around six hours with the hearing aid engaged, which doesn't match what you'll get from many over the counter and prescription hearing aids. So for years, some folks have asked me if I would ever do a shirt,
a t-shirt, with the tech meme Ride Home logo on it, and then something else. I'm finally looking into that in the interest of having something ready by the holiday season, but what I wanted to know was what should that something else be? Like, what if I had the logo and then some phrase underneath it? What should the phrase be? The first thing that sprung to my mind was end quote, but maybe also nothing more for you today. But what else? Is there some phrase that I say all the time that makes
you think of this show? Hit me up on Twitter and Threads, and either vote for end quote or nothing more for you today, or suggest something else. I am not taking this too seriously, I'm not thinking of this as a money making scheme or really anything. It's just something fun since folks have asked for it in the past, so let me know what you want the shirt to be tucked in tomorrow.